Day 92 of my epic papercutting quest, using the Dover Books “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book for inspiration
This is papercut 092 of my epic papercutting project (using the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book), where I’m adapting the designs for papercutting, and then practising by cutting out 100 designs in 100 days. Eventually I may may incorporate them in future papercuts that are made by laser and also by hand.
Er, I think something has gone awry at the top of this one!
Day 91 of my epic papercutting quest, using the Dover Books “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book for inspiration
This is papercut 091 of my epic papercutting project (using the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book). I’m adapting the designs for papercutting, and then practising by cutting out 100 designs in 100 days. Eventually I may may incorporate them in future papercuts that are made by laser and also by hand.
Day 10 of my epic papercutting quest, using the Dover Books “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book for inspiration
This is papercut 090 of my epic papercutting project (using the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book). I’m adapting the designs for papercutting, and then practising by cutting out 100 designs in 100 days. Eventually I may may incorporate them in future papercuts that are made by laser and also by hand.
Only 10 more to go! And I’m still improving.
This is papercut 089 of my epic papercutting project (using the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book). I’m adapting the designs for papercutting, and then practising by cutting out 100 designs in 100 days. Eventually I may may incorporate them in future papercuts that are made by laser and also by hand.
I like this design:
And I finally started with a sharp new blade in my X-Acto knife. Makes it much easier to cut. (Although also much easier to accidentally make the wrong cuts, too.)
This is papercut 087 of my epic papercutting project (using the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book). I’m adapting the designs for papercutting, and then practising by cutting out 100 designs in 100 days. Eventually I may may incorporate them in future papercuts that are made by laser and also by hand.
I honestly think I am getting better at this, little by little!
The cut-lines are getting much cleaner. OK, the large circles are still a bit wobbly, but a lot of the other shapes are quite good.
I might admit to cheating a bit, because whereas before I used to say “it would look better up close if I tidied some of the cuts up” — I’m actually tidying the cuts up before I take the photos now 😉
This is papercut 086 of my epic papercutting project (using the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book). I’m adapting the designs for papercutting, and then practising by cutting out 100 designs in 100 days. Eventually I may may incorporate them in future papercuts that are made by laser and also by hand.
Woo, the cuts on this one are quite crisp…
…even when you look at them up close. And I still had a blunt blade and was basically just hacking away at the paper. I’m quite pleased with this :)
This is papercut 085 (only 15 more to go!) of my papercutting project (using the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book. I am adapting the designs for papercutting, and then practising by cutting out 100 designs in 100 days. Eventually I may may incorporate them in future papercuts that are made by laser and also by hand.)
Because of the many repetitive elements in this design I think it might be one of the designs that would look better if cut by laser.
However, I’m not too disappointed by the hand-cut version. The ‘sun ray’ bits are quite crisp, actually.
As well as the central sun/flower design, I can also see things in this design that remind me of fish. (Or sharks. Or maybe birds.) When I move onto my next epic papercutting project (of creating all of my own designs from scratch) then I might remember this one, and try to hide some fish or animals in an abstract-looking design.
This is papercut 084 of my papercutting quest (using the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book, in preparation for incorporating them in future papercuts that are made by laser and also by hand.)
I really like this design, and it didn’t seem to take very long to cut. That reminds me – I must start timing how long the cuts actually take, because I really have no idea how long each design takes to cut. I enjoy the process so much and find it so ‘therapeutic’ that sometimes I can be cutting a really big project and it feels like the time is just flying by. And then other times, of course, I could be fighting with a fiddly design, in fading daylight, and using a blunt blade that I can’t be bothered to change – and in those cases the cuts seem to take forever.
I’m also getting better at tidying up the cuts before I take close-up photos of them!
This is papercut 83 of my papercutting quest (using the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book, in preparation for incorporating them in future papercuts that are made by laser and also by hand.)
This is a very simple-looking design, but sometimes they are the hardest ones to make a decent job of cutting…
…but even close up I think this one actually looks OK. My skills really are (gradually) improving, as I get closer to the end of my 100-day challenge.
Papercut 082 : Oh dear! I’m in the process of changing over my website host, and have been a week without being able to access my blog!
I’ve moved the old pages and blog posts across to the new host, but there are still a lot of tweaks that I need to make in order to get the site fully working again.
In the meantime, I continued to do my papercuttings every day, so now (belatedly) I am finally able to update the website with my latest papercuttings:
Day 82 of my papercutting adventure (using the “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments” book).
It might not look it, but this was quite a tricky design to cut. The design involved having to leave just tiny links of paper in order to hold the actual physical piece of paper together. So the overall piece got very lacy and delicate towards the end.
I’d cut similar designs to this one earlier on in this project (i.e. even before starting this ‘100 days’ project), but I didn’t really like the results, before. However, now that I’m getting more proficient at cutting by hand (and also at adapting designs so that they can be cut out but still look fairly attractive), the end result is quite close to what I had imagined in the first place:
Plus, it’s another art nouveau-style design, so that quite appeals to me, and it also makes any mistakes less obvious because the curves and swirls in the design make it harder to spot.
